Rolling back school lunch changes that Michelle Obama advocated so kids can eat more pizza and fries, and doing it on her birthday, is so on-brand for the MAGA hats in charge. Fuck them.
That said, by a simple twist of fate, I happen to know quite a bit about what schools purchase to feed children. While I agree that the programs Mrs. Obama advocated were a step in the right direction, schools can’t fix families, and the eating habits established in families accompany kids to school. School dietary departments are caught between the rock of what kids will eat, and the hard place of their genuine interest in feeding kids a healthy meal.
Luckily, the invisible hand of the free market stepped into the breach, as it so often does. Chicken nuggets were re-formulated to have whole grain breading, and new lines of whole grain frozen pizzas and other bread items became popular. Whole grain granola bars and other cereal bars, which are nutritionally a baby step from a candy bar, also were pretty widely purchased.
It struck me as the quintessentially American response to the realities of nutrition – pick a few slightly more healthy choices, market the shit out of those slightly more healthy products, and damn the calories. Type II diabetes at 20, here we come.
While you can’t force good food down kids’ throats, the focus on providing more fruits and vegetables probably put more good choices in front of kids, so the smarter ones who are going to buck their upbringing at least could pick out a healthy meal at school. Since those slightly rebellious kids were probably more likely to become Democrats, the program obviously had to be curtailed. Since Michelle Obama is a black woman, even more obviously, the program had to be curtailed on her birthday. QED in a red hat.
Hunter Gathers
Another move geared to placate my racist co-workers by White Trash Muad’dib.
MattF
I suppose the ‘good’ news is that every single AA potential voter saw the slap to Michelle for what it was. GOTV, folks.
Amir Khalid
Test. The site has been acting strangely for the past few minutes. Seems to be okay for now.
Litlebritdifrnt
“Petty” sums Trump up in one word. His entire existence is based on the petty erasing of the Black Dude from the history books. In some cases it is school lunches, in other cases it is the earth shattering shitting on the Iran Nuclear deal. However, in the end it all comes down to petty.
trollhattan
Oh please, oh please, oh please…. Have we been sufficiently good to catch Devin in the Russia net?
Hildebrand
I work on the East Side of Detroit as a pastor of a Lutheran Church, my congregation is in the midst of a pretty significant food-desert, as most of the ‘grocery’ stores in our neighborhood are all-in-one convenience/liquor stores. They carry basic groceries (mostly frozen, dry, or canned foods), but nothing significant. All of us in the non-profit community have been working together to get them to actually put fresh produce and healthier options in their stores. We have been educating folks that healthier eating leads to fewer health concerns. My church has a weekly cooking class that teaches folks how to take all that lovely fruit and veg and turn it into great meal options, and for the fifth year in a row we planted a large community garden.
The support that Michelle Obama’s efforts provided was priceless – people listened, they started changing behaviors, we could see real progress. We needed her voice and her tireless work. I just don’t understand why anyone would want to roll that back. This is a public health issue – for everyone, urban, suburban, rural.
SFAW
You can’t? Maybe that explains why my kids hate me.
TaMara (HFG)
@Amir Khalid: I broke the blog. Like really broke it. Fix’d, but I’ll be over in the corner contemplating my sins.
OzarkHillbilly
@Hildebrand:
Healthy people live longer, vote longer.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
From your keyboard to FSM’s earlike appendages. I’m guessing The Traitor Nunes will throw the aide (i.e., the one who was doing the actual texting with Parnas) under the bus, ASAP.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SFAW: my dad used to try the “You will not leave this table until you have finished…” a few times. As the youngest, he had mostly given up on stuff like that by the time I came along. Also, there were, and are, very few foods I wouldn’t eat. Even the vegetables that my mother– otherwise a very good cook– believed should be cooked to mush.
OzarkHillbilly
@TaMara (HFG): So YOU are the guilty party. Bad girl! BAD girl!! No treats for you!
Brachiator
@MattF:
It’s way beyond that. From CNN and elsewhere:
Trump can’t help himself. Whenever possible, he combines pettiness, racism and baleful ignorance.
But payback is coming.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
On the topic of kids eating at school and swipes at people of color promoting their health, this cheap stunt may not be just a single coincidence given the fact that the Panthers shamed the government into providing free breakfast for low income kids. I have a suspicion that the number MAGAts who are aware of that is in the double digits.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My parents never did that. We had to try everything, even if we hadn’t liked it the last time it was on the table, but we didn’t have to eat it. No dessert if we didn’t but it was our choice to go to bed hungry if we didn’t want to eat what Ma put on the table.
“I am not a short order cook!”
MattF
@SFAW: My guess is that Nunes will declare that his relationship with Trump is ‘perfect’ and threaten to sue anyone who claims otherwise. You can’t understate the degree of corruption here. It’s complete and then some.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Please let it be so.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TaMara (HFG): WaterGirl posted downstairs that she wants to talk to you.
germy
@trollhattan:
Betty Cracker
Since the Dems are the only party that even attempts to govern this large, diverse, wealthy, influential, nuclear-armed country, I don’t think they have the luxury of counter-trolling when they’re in power. But maybe they could make an exception and see about disbanding Space Force once The Beast is out of office. That would chap his ass!
Bex
@Hildebrand: You’d think the so-called pro lifers would be all over this issue. But they aren’t. Because they really don’t care. So all of them and their big march next week can shove it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: Yes, but what did Devin Nunes’ cow have to say?
Sloane Ranger
Slightly OT but related. Remember the US woman with diplomatic immunity who drove on the wrong side of the road and killed a motorcyclist? Well,
there have been more incidents of this happening around the same US base, including one involving a car with diplomatic license plates. Fortunately no one else has been injured, so far.
Clearly the word has gone round, US government employees, military personnel and their families working abroad don’t have to bother obeying the laws and regulations of their host nations. Accidentally kill or seriously injure a foreigner? Even one from a close ally? The US government will fly you out and laugh in the face of extradition requests.
PeakVT
@Hildebrand: You are simply insufficiently petty and greedy to understand to understand Trumpolini. But that’s okay – don’t change a bit.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Are we having a double posting issue?
MomSense
@Hildebrand:
You are doing such important work in your community. I think the real issue here is all those sweet government dollars that the mega food industry lost because Michelle Obama had the crazy idea that we should provide our children healthy, nutritious meals. The republicans sell it to their base with pettiness, resentment, racism, and nanny state bullshit but it’s just getting dollars to their donors. A day ending in Y for the corrupt GOP.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
You can’t force healthy food down kids throats, but what does work (NB I have 3 small children) is *only putting healthy food in front of them*. My kids will at first refuse vegetables, but if I put a bowl of cut vegetables on the table while they wait for dinner to be finished, they’ll usually all eat most of them before the main meal is served
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: It appears we are. Strange.
WaterGirl
I like to play the game that many of us do… I see the title of a post either from my RSS feed or from the fly-out wings, and I try to guess which front pager posted it. I’m pretty good at that game, as many of us are.
Then I wonder for a second what the post will be about, and sometimes I can guess that, too.
But when the title is Petty? With a hundred ore more petty things coming from this administration every
minutehourday, it’s impossible to guess what it might be about. Totally not fair!Betty Cracker
@Sloane Ranger: How shameful. That woman should be returned to the UK to face justice.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I was hoping that your finger might have stuttered, or that you sneezed while hitting POST, but that was too much to hope for.
I will keep an eye out. thanks.
MattF
@Sloane Ranger: Note a similar incident in DC. I guess diplomatic services see their job as taking care of their own. Caused quite a ruckus at the time, as I recall.
WaterGirl
I was thinking yesterday of the first year that Barack Obama asked all of us to volunteer for something on Martin Luther King day. Anything, Just volunteer for something.
He may have been a candidate at the time; I don’t recall for sure.
But because of that, because he asked, I joined the mentor program in our town and did that for years.
Trying to figure out what to do to honor Trump on Monday? Should I go out and steal something? Conspired to do something hurtful to someone else? The choices are endless!
Aleta
@WaterGirl:
Rescue me, should I go wrong
If I dig too deep or if I stay too long
Amir Khalid
Petty is as petty does. I’m surprised that Trump still hasn’t had Michelle’s vegetable garden bulldozed and paved over.
Duane
@Hildebrand: Evil and/or stupid explains all Republican thinking. Having the racist gun rally in Richmond on MLK Day is another example.
cliosfanboy
@?BillinGlendaleCA: moo????
WaterGirl
@Aleta: I think that band came out of Champaign, Illinois, where i live.
Leto
@germy: I enjoyed one of the replies to that tweet:
Devin Nunes for prison: Make Cows Safe Again!
Betty Cracker
@MattF: How is that similar? The Republic of Georgia waived diplomatic immunity, and the perp did time.
Sloane Ranger
@MattF: At least in that case Georgia waived his diplomatic immunity and he went to prison.
All we want is the same as New York got. A fair trial, a verdict and an appropriate sentence if the verdict was ‘guilty’.
Oh, and for other US personnel to obey the law so similar tragedies are prevented in future.
cliosfanboy
@MattF: back in the early 90s i just avoided being t-boned by a speeding Mercedes with Russian diplomat plates on Rt 123 in McLean. The car’s driver and passengers appeared to all be teens
Ruckus
@Litlebritdifrnt:
It’s being played at a pretty high level and all of us are involved even if we don’t want to be. That seems to be intended as a bit different than petty. I mean yes he is a simpleton and deals with the world that way, as an immature brat, but he’s playing a very serious game to get to his point. Of course because he’s an immature brat he never thinks things through to the end, he’s all response and in the end mostly to his own stupid actions and words.
trollhattan
@MattF:
It’s hard for me to believe there’s even one person left who requires convincing. On this news I informed my kid about the time Ronald Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable.
Republicans. Can’t live with them, can’t make them into lampshades.
cliosfanboy
@Amir Khalid: i think it was dug up.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: True. But it took quite a bit of arm-twisting. I’m not excusing the Trump administration’s bad behavior— but bad behavior is actually the accepted norm in this case, and it takes an unusually perceptive executive to defy that norm. We haven’t got that.
trollhattan
@cliosfanboy:
Is there any chance it’s not a putting green?
Cheryl from Maryland
I think MomSense is right is that this move is to placate the mega commercial food companies. Healthy appearing food is probably unhealthy from such a source, filled with preservatives and chemical flavors. While it’s sad for those school systems who rely on processed food, there is a movement at schools to cook from scratch with real ingredients, resulting in good outcomes for the students and the cafeteria workers. CF: this story in the Washington Post.
JPL
@Hildebrand: Apparently they are not really pro-life.
Leto
@Sloane Ranger: Hey, so this is my former base. Literally the one I just came from. Saying that “the word has gone round that military families don’t have to follow the law” is plain horseshit. What happened with the diplomat’s wife is a fucking crime, but that’s the State Department. Different set of rules. While you, and a ton of us, are pissed, there’s no need to 1) talk out of your ass and 2) slander the rest of us who are trying/tried our level best to be the best ambassadors/neighbors as we could. We stress that at every level, but we still have knuckleheads that we have to deal with. Much like the US has to deal with Louise Linton and every other fuck knuckle you export over here to continually spew shit over our airwaves.
JPL
@TaMara (HFG): I want the ducks back… I tried to link to it from john’s twitter feed but it’s poof. I don’t blame you though because your are the duck master.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: Yes, but at least Trump is bringing lightbulbs back*!
*From a Faux Noise cryon that M^4 posted last night.
Kay
The junk kids eats in lower income rural areas is just sad though. Conservatives can crow all they like about beating big, bad Michelle Obama but these kids are on a steady garbage diet and it hurts them now and it will hurt them as they age, and they will die sooner.
She is right. We’re killing them. I say this as someone who does not have a great diet myself- they get almost no nutritious food. Tons of calories! But very little real food an I’m not talking about fancy organic – I’m talking about plain meat and bread and vegetables like carrots. Or an apple. A potato that isn’t deep fried. This is not ambitious.
T
JPL
@Leto: I promise I’ll behave now. btw How are you doing?
WaterGirl
@JPL: That made me laugh! In a very sad way. Fucking hypocrites.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
Now that’s just crazy talk.
Mo MacArbie
@WaterGirl: I thought Petty & co. were Florida Men. I think you do get to claim REO Speedwagon though.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sloane Ranger: @Betty Cracker: and trump’s idea was to stage a meeting between the woman who killed the boy and his parents, so they could weep together and find forgiveness and healing and closure, because that’s how it would work on a reality show. And no one around him could tell him how cruel, obscene and batshit crazy that was. Assuming that the people closest to him recognized how cruel, obscene and batshit crazy that was.
Leto
@JPL: Not too bad; PT is picking up in intensity. My therapist is throwing more exercises at me because I keeping better/stronger. I’m sort of running again? I can do about 20 seconds worth, form is… well the brain remembers what the body should be doing, but I still have a ways to go with that. But baby steps and all.
Working through the various retirement systems (military/civilian) and trying to get all that sorted. PITA, but to be expected. Still have to do all the VA stuff, so overall keeping busy. :)
Ruckus
@Hildebrand:
When someone hates everyone who is a better person than them, and in this case that’s most everyone on the planet, there are two ways to fix the issue. First is improve one’s self. trump is incapable of that, even though he could make leaps and bounds easily, because he’s so far below normal. Second is of course to drag, push, beat everyone down to their level. As this works far less effectively than the other possible method, of course it’s the one he choses.
He is a weak, ignorant bully, who has managed to find himself in a position that he can actually bully a whole lot of people, which is supposed to raise him to higher. All it’s done is expose him for who he really is. Sometimes it’s a bitch to get what you think you want, but should never have. He’s found fools gold.
Kay
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m on a school committee and when the Obama regs hit all but three of the of the committee bitched about it- went on and on. One of the committee members who I happen to know is a Republican said “we’re opposed to healthy food now?” – he couldn’t believe they were opposing it.
It’s a problem. It’s obvious. Apparently we’re forbidden from trying to address it out of some lunatic “pride” or something. It would be okay if it if it were suicide but it’s not- they’re dependent on adults for food. They’re killing them.
Ydobon
@Sloane Ranger: So what did you think of this headline?
‘Even Trump met us’: Harry Dunn’s parents say Boris Johnson has no ‘wish or intention’ to see them”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I remember when Bloomberg tried to regulate or tax sodas in NYC, and Palin showed up at some rally sucking on a probably two-liter Big Gulp, and all the howler monkeys howled with laughter at her outrageous, transgressive wit and she mugged for them and said, “Shoot, it’s just pawp!”. Right around that time TDS had a doctor on who said he had performed two liver transplants on kids under twelve, due mostly to their constant consumption of “pawp”
Hildebrand
@MomSense: Yep – its the same thing with the damn pay-day loan/check cashing places. Those ghouls have dumped so much cash into the GOP coffers that we may never be rid of them.
Rebuilding communities is hard enough, fighting against the headwinds of the knaves and villains exploiting everybody in sight makes it that much harder.
H.E.Wolf
Fortunately, the POTUS is never the one honored on MLK Day. MLK is. So none of us will have to emulate the current occupant of the White House in any way. :)
On a less facetious note, thank you for the reminder that MLK Day is a good day to do volunteer work!
Kay
The thing about lower income white people is the school meal is often the only “formal” meal the kids get. By “formal” I mean at a set time and with a planned variety of foods- so meat, veg, bread.
It isn’t that people are planning and preparing dinners of chicken nuggets and Mountain Dew. They’re not planning and preparing “meals” at all. That’s why the school meal is more important to those kids. It’s THE meal.
trollhattan
@Kay:
IIRC the big Republican “gotcha” for the Obama healthy school food initiative was “The kids are throwing out all this healthy stuff!” To which I can only reply, yeah, just like they throw out everything else we feed them. They’re just as picky about their chicken nuggets as they are about carrot sticks.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I see things on light rail that chill my soul. (Which is why I bike when it’s not raining.) One time a teenage mom poured Pepsi into her infant’s bottle, which to be fair calmed the little one right down.
I died a little that day.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s horrible and painful for them. Their baby teeth rot and have to be extracted. They’re overweight and short of breath. They feel bad and they don’t sleep well and they miss more school. They are constantly going to the emergency room.
And for what? Because these idiots got their feelings hurt because a black mother told them they’re killing their kids? They are. We are. It’s true.
Leto
@Kay: A lot of the lower income kids get both breakfast and lunch at school. My school had a breakfast/lunch program for lower income kids, and when my son went through school they had the same programs at his. For a lot of kids, this is only food security they have. Right up there with Reagan and ketchup is a vegetable. Cannot stress how much I hate them.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ever have over cooked Brussels Sprouts?
However mom did this they tasted like over cooked battery acid. Or at least how I imagined that would taste….. Hated those with an unsurpassed passion. I’d rather go hungry for days than eat them. And have managed 2 days in a row before she gave up.
Other than that she was pretty good to very good.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: It’s still there but Melania doesn’t set foot in it any longer. It’s planted and maintained by the Parks Department personnel and there are still tours of the garden.
debbie
@Sloane Ranger:
Is there a country that wouldn’t? I lived in NYC and remember foreign diplomats being spirited out of the country after incidents ranging from DWI to rape.
Baud
Those standards will be replaced by new standards under Melania Trump’s Most Healthy, Most Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2020.
JR
Part of the issue with healthy initiatives is that preparing healthy, good tasting food requires skills in food prep that most schools lack the time and money to produce
zhena gogolia
@Hildebrand:
God bless you. (And I mean that seriously.)
I pray we can get our national soul back from this demon.
Sloane Ranger
@Leto: If you read this as implying this was the position being taken by the base Commander and other senior officers, then I apologise.
What I was trying to say is that the assholes you mention have got the message that there will be no consequences for their bad actions. The Trump administration will protect them so the worst likely to happen is a carpeting by a senior officer/manager before being shipped home.
In the meantime, others might die or be seriously injured and the fact that only a small minority of individuals are at fault, doesn’t help the injured or families of the dead.
As for those doubtless unpleasant Brits who have exported themselves to the US, none of them have actually killed anyone as far as I know.
debbie
@Kay:
Funny they never thought they might be condemning their base to early deaths. Oh, well. //
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I spent a few days on vacation with some relatives a couple of years ago. My aunt, two middle-aged cousins and their teenaged kids. All the meals were pretty much beige. Grilled meat, some kind of potato, garlic bread, noodles. Pancakes in the morning. Processed meat sandwiches on white bread, potato chips. Granted, it was vacation, but the only produce I saw was the fruit grandma cut up in the morning (mostly untouched) and a sort of half-assed salad with dinner. The adults are college-educated, solidly middle to upper-middle class. And all of them fairly slender– while I make a conscious (if often unsuccessful) effort to eat healthily and have struggled with my weight all my life (yes I’m whining that it’s unfair). They eat crap, but they don’t eat too much of it, I guess.
debbie
@Ruckus:
I was out of the house before I learned vegetables had crunch.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Everything is about the dollar. Or in this case the ruble.
I’m reminded about something in the bible, a golden statue of some sort, and a lesson that some ignore and some actively try to prove.
debbie
@Kay:
I’m hoping this idea gets some traction.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Ruckus:
re-heated from frozen in a plastic bag? Oh yeah. Thought I hated them like everybody else. When my sister started to get interested in cooking, we learned that vegetables could be good! Roasted and grilled fresh vegetables were a revelation.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Am actually shocked it’s there, but since Trump spends the least amount of time possible at the WH maybe they just never got around to erasing it.
Or don’t know it exists.
JPL
@Leto: I’m sure that Avalune is keeping an eye on you. It’s amazing how far you have come and yet progress is still being made.
Aleta
@WaterGirl: I was in Champaign–Urbana once, in January even. The town had a really nice vibe. I got to go there for a work-study program w/ Laney and John Dickel.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
“Discovered” Brussels sprouts as an adult at our best Italian restaurant. They were nothing remotely like the fully-boiled tiny cabbages mom cooked, using the method applied to all vegetables.
Upper Midwest Germans gonna cook like Upper Midwest Germans. There will be no germs in that food whatsoever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: old age is making me sentimental. I loved this.
Sloane Ranger
@Ydobon: Pretty much the same as you I suspect. Johnson (or his handlers) doesn’t want to be dragged into a position of having to criticise Trump just prior to trade negotiations.
To be fair, he doesn’t do empathy well and most of his foreign policy interventions have achieved the opposite effects to what he wanted.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Relatives visit several times a year and I’m not a processed food type of person. Even on vacation it’s easy to put together a Charcuterie board with lots of fruit on it for lunch snacking.
Leto
@Sloane Ranger:
And what I’m saying is that for the military personnel there, the screws have been tightened even further on what they can/can’t do. And the SOFA agreement between the US and UK means that military commanders won’t be shipping their people back to the States, unlike the State Department.
[…unpleasant Brits who have exported themselves…]
Stuart Varney. Louise Linton. Nigel Farrage. They’re just the tip of the Anglo-Saxon iceberg. They’re all complicit in electing Trumpov, so they have plenty of fucking blood on their hands. You’re not clean in this.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: SWEET! I loved that.
Leto
@JPL: Haha, Avalune is the biggest taskmaster! But in the best way. Honestly I’m surprised that there’s still progress to be made. It’s something I quiz my therapist on every 3-4 weeks, but he’s insistent there is. Knees are still making small gains (like 1-2 degrees of flexion a month); same with my right shoulder. Getting more range of motion back, slowly getting stronger. I can reach up to the second shelf in the kitchen cabinets with not much issue now. Huzzah!
I think the biggest help is just that I have a ton of supportive people around me, Avalune being the biggest one. I still have some crap days, but they help pick me up and remind me how far I’ve come. It helps. :)
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: If I recall correctly, it’s funded, supported, and protected by a private foundation. Oh yeah, he could order it bulldozed but the foundation is there to prevent that.
Melania posed in it with some kids in 2017 & 18, harvested some turnips and kale while wearing the wrong shoes for a garden one year, and a $1300 flannel shirt the next. She lectured the kids to eat fruits and vegetables so they could be healthy and make good decisions (I may have imagined that last bit).
WaterGirl
@Mo MacArbie: that works! i never really followed either of them, oops.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ugh. It’s one thing to be ignorant; it’s another to be proud of your ignorance.
WaterGirl
@H.E.Wolf: Should have said “in “honor” of Trump, not to “honor Trump”. I know you just being facetious, but point taken.
We can take MLK day as an opportunity to honor the country that we, and Barack Obama, love, and the Republicans clearly do not. We can still aspire to that.
J R in WV
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
WOW!
Now I’m even more glad I prefer beer! And wine.
I kid, but I also know this is a real issue. When I see folks at the grocery with one buggy full of pop and a smaller buggy with frozen meals in it, I have to look away, quickly; they are not doing themselves any good with that shopping pattern!
opiejeanne
@J R in WV: There was only one fat kid at my elementary school that I remember. He was a year younger and every day his lunchbox had a whole bottle of Pony Boy soda and Twinkies or HoHos or similar, maybe some chips, but I don’t remember a sandwich. While we all loved that stuff I remember that we were all repulsed that that was his lunch, that someone who cared for him sent him to school with no real food at all, and we all knew in our 1959 hearts why he was so fat.
Mike in NC
We made one of our infrequent trips to the local Walmart yesterday. Virtually everybody I saw getting into or out of a car was morbidly obese and lighting up a cigarette. Putin’s plan to kill us all seems to be on track.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
In 2012 after the last refuckingpublican recession cost me everything, a friend put me up for a year. I worked and was able to start SS so I paid my way but didn’t have enough for actual rent. He cooked veg over a grill on occasion, and I ate one sprout. Not bad. Actually eatable. Not my fav but still eatable.
J R in WV
Was talking about a neighbor who worked her way through college working in catering and restaurant cooking. Then after she got her bio degree, she got a job as a health inspector with the local health dept. She knew how to inspect, what to look for, from experience.
Then local health depts were charged with regulating public smoking of tobacco.
The inspectors have badges, but don’t carry guns… so they went to the sheriff’s dept, and got deputies to accompany then when they inspected bars where there was a lot of resistance to the anti-smoking ordinances. But now no one expects to smoke ciggs in any business around here.
I was stunned when we were on a driving vacation and stopped for lunch in Missouri, giant truck stop restaurant with no one in there but us, and a guy sits down next to us, out of like 80 tables, and fires up a Camel… on purpose, no doubt. I laid down money and we left… I imagine the food was also smoked around back in the kitchen. Won’t be spending much money in MO.
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
G was telling me about an article he read about the farmers who hybridized Brussels sprouts in the 1980s to make them less bitter. Modern Brussels sprouts are not the same variety as the ones your mom made you eat.
Ruckus
@Aleta:
I thought you meant George Dickel. Which was my favorite whiskey (and drink) when I consumed. I googled and saw a John Dickel and also George Dickel came up. Funny things one can see on the internet.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Never thought of it as germ control but yeah, cook it long enough and all the germs are gone.
tybee
@Aleta: John Dickel
George’s brother?
tybee
@Ruckus:
damn you.
germy
patrick II
It’s not just that he reacts to everything in a petty asshole manner. He is a proactive petty asshole, he actively looks for things to be an asshole about. He is what other petty assholes can only aspire to.
sab
@Hildebrand: He doesn’t believe in healthy food. He lives on fast food himself, and he’s still alive, so it must be okay. Remember how fast Rush Limbaugh turned around when he finally had a heart attack?
Kelly
@Ruckus: My only childhood won’t eat that crisis was canned peas. Still won’t eat’m. For some reason my dad decided I should eat all of what was served. Mom was of the try a bite then move on approach. It was one of very few times my folks conflicted in front of us. Dad made me sit at the table for about an hour before he gave up. Mom never served canned peas again.
germy
WaterGirl
@JPL: I don’t even look at the grocery ads in the paper. Most of everything that is on sale is processed food.
Ruckus
@Leto:
It can be difficult to see just how far we have to go to come back from injuries. I was once hit by a truck, not in a car, I’d been knocked off my mc at the time and after I hit the ground a truck coming the other direction ran into and somewhat over me. Adrenaline being what it is, I was able to make it the rest of the way home before it wore off and I couldn’t move. Did in my knee, which should have been replaced but doc said I was too young, tore my rotator cuff so that my shoulder was unusable and broke my hand. Had to have PT and then surgery on the shoulder and then more PT for a total of a year of PT and 6 months of PT on the knee. Hand in a strange cast for weeks, then, you guessed it, PT. That was 25 yrs ago and the knee is still OEM and mostly good, the shoulder works and the hand is fine. Now the rest of me…….
My point is that all of this takes time to heal and repair, no matter how bad you want it to be normal.
And I once had a guy, worked for me, his bike made a left turn on the freeway one day on the way to work, hit the center armco, flipped over broke his back and severed his leg just below the hip, only the quad was holding his leg on. Six months later he was walking, with a cane. Six months later without cane.
Same point here. It all takes time to rebuild and relearn.
Kent
Don’t forget Trump’s canceling of the Tubman $20 bill to keep the genocidal racist Jackson there instead.
Brachiator
@germy:
I know nothing about the kid, and don’t want to know anything. He’s 13 years old. Even Trump is smart enough not to talk about him, and make him part of the social or political conversation.
Ruckus
@opiejeanne:
My last year in the navy I spent part of it on temp duty as a master of arms of the base enlisted transit barracks. Checked people in and out, generally kept order – it was like being a captain of the barracks. Also good duty, 12 hrs on, 72 off that I didn’t have to be on base during. There was refrigerator to store the box lunches for the midnight watch. Every night an american cheese on white bread sandwich, dry, a hardboiled egg and a twinkie. The all American snack. Good story, one evening a guy checks in – has to give his name to be written in the journal, and he tells me my name. We had the same first and last, same middle initial, and he was also the II, as in next in line but not Jr. If that’s not freaky enough there is another vet at the VA that has the same last name and same last 4 digits of his social, which is how you are identified normally. We’ve been at the same clinic at the same time waiting for our appointment at least once.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Mom still didn’t cook them well.
It might have also had something to do with the “You have to take some and eat everything you take” dictum. I would have been happy not to take any sprouts and eat nothing for dinner rather than those sprouts. Mom was a depression era kid, her dad died in 36 and all the kids had to take jobs to support the family.
Ruckus
@tybee:
Not that many people know George. Good stuff if you like that sort of thing, which I did.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
He’s had decades of experience and a good asshole teacher in dad.
John Revolta
@germy:
Do. Not. Get. Out. Of. The. Boat.
LongHairedWeirdo
The notion that Type II diabetes is caused by sugar consumption isn’t supported by science, as I understand it – however, if you have a propensity for diabetes, a high sugar diet can make things horribly bad, horribly fast, once diabetes gets going.
You see, there’s like a 90% correlation in twin studies – and keep in mind, a person on Atkins or Keto won’t look diabetic, even if they’ve lost blood sugar control, so that 90% correlation might be higher. 90% correlation usually means about 81% shared factors, so genetics plays a big role.
First: what is diabetes? It’s when your body can no longer control your blood sugar. There are multiple theories as to why; high sugar, requiring lots of insulin, feeds the insulin-resistance hypothesis, and, lots of people with diabetes are fat, because fat gain is one of the first symptoms. But if that fat isn’t visceral fat, it’s *probably* not affecting their internal health. Visceral fat is bioactive; other fats aren’t (per my understanding).
But the funny thing is, while people often point to the pancreas as the problem in diabetes, they’re only the sole guilty party in Type I (where the body isn’t producing enough insulin, and never will), and what really matters is the liver. The liver controls blood sugar release, but it can’t sense blood sugar – it works off other cues. So, you see, there are already three possible methods of looking at diabetes. Are the muscles insulin resistant? Are the pancreas producing enough insulin, given insulin resistance? And, why is the liver mis-signaling (which it technically can’t do – but what else is making the liver say “more sugar needed!”?) I also think there might be other possibilities – there seems to be something called “metabolic disease” which comes with a lot of inflammation, and inflammation is suspected in a lot of whole-body issues, so it might not be anything we quite expect, right now.
That said, yes, simple carbs are a big problem, and because of the dominance of the lipid hypothesis – that fats consumed play a big role in cholesterol levels, etc. – most nutritionists are trained to completely ignore carbs, and to cut fats, and call the result “healthy”. Once you lose blood sugar control, sugars are that much more dangerous, because your blood sugar will rise more easily, to higher levels, and once they hit 170, they can start killing off your insulin producing cells. (Slowly – but remember, most people don’t learn they have diabetes because they don’t feel well! It’s dead silent, unless you notice the weight gain and extra urination, and are alarmed.) That’s the nasty thing about diabetes – John Cole (I hate just calling him “Cole”) once called it a metaphorical dick punch, and I agreed, except, without the metaphorical bit.
It poisons you slowly, very slowly, you can’t tell it’s doing it, it does so using some of the most common (and some of the most tasty) foods available; it’s often progressive, it’s not well understood, and it’s completely heartless – it doesn’t care if you haven’t had any food in the past 16 hours, and the only thing out is pizza with barely any cheese or topping, it’ll still let the crust shoot your blood sugar to the sky! So: yeah, dick punch. Literal, though perhaps mental. (I also like the imagery of “dick punch” because a kick to the groin could have been poor aim, but a punch (to me) seems more directed and intentional. Next time someone talks Intelligent Design, ask about Type II diabetes – not very intelligently designed, eh?)
Fats can slow down and moderate the effects of carbohydrates eaten (and, if it helps satiate you, has 0 effect on blood sugar, so those macadamia nuts are a really nice snack if you don’t gobble), and protein is the number one satiation cue. For school lunches thinner roll, and a thicker slice of bologna (or hamburger patty), and a slice of higher protein than craft plastic – no, wait, that’s Kraft’s pasteurized process cheese food – would make a far better, more satiating lunch, that would be far healthier, I’d bet… because most breads are completely empty calories. (Great if you’re about to exercise, bad if you’re about to sit in a classroom for hours.)
Um. Where was I? Right. Lecturing. Again. Sorry.
MattF
My mom served canned vegetables, and I never ate them— my rule, apparently, was to avoid anything green. I’ve learned better since, but it took a while.
Biff Longbotham
@debbie: Get a Penelope Casas Spanish cookbook. Spaniards love their veggies properly cooked, while retaining their flavor and character. When I get served vegetables with ‘crunch’, I can’t help feeling like I’m getting goat food. Try Pisto Manchego.
Donald Gisselbeck
What happens to picky eaters in a hunter-gatherer society? Do they just starve?
MattF
@Donald Gisselbeck: They subsist on pizza.
opiejeanne
@Kelly: I ate canned peas and canned green beans growing up and didn’t hate them, but back then frozen peas weren’t very good either. Mom was from Missouri and tended to overcook veggies, but she got spinach right. Fresh spinach. She hated the canned stuff growing up and never fed it to us, and when I encountered it on a school lunch tray I was shocked that anyone thought that was food.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I noticed several years ago that none of the coupons were ever for a bag of apples or carrots or meat. My husband and a neighbor’s husband used to love cutting out coupons for groceries 30 years ago.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Yep, all the coupons are for some sort of crap in a box.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: When I had my first baby, after a well-check when he was 2 weeks old, I was waiting in the pharmacy for a prescription for … something, I don’t remember. The clerk called my last name and a woman near me got up too. My last name isn’t common so I was surprised. So after she got her baby’s prescription she came back and talked with me, and we discovered that we had the same doctor, and she couldn’t understand why he had ordered so many blood tests for here; I told her I was Rh negative so I had to have them pretty often, and she started getting angry. That explained his surprise when I’d come in for a prenatal checkup the prior month and he, in shock, told me I’d already had my baby and what was I doing there? Or did my husband have a married brother? BIL was 13, so no.
That asshole had never noticed we were two different people, didn’t look at our charts every time we came in, and he only knew that one of us was Rh negative, so both of us were sent for titer tests every month during the pregnancy, and when one of us delivered he still hadn’t caught on that there were two of us. Arrogant as hell. I was his “model” patient because I didn’t put on any weight during the pregnancy and he actually trotted me out into the waiting room once to show the other women how good I was.
She ratted him out to management and they fired him, and still unaware that there were two of us, when I said hello to him as I was checking in the following time, he snubbed me.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Oh. my. god. Appalling!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Donald Gisselbeck:
yup, in hunter-gatherer societies and, according to my dad, in my grandparents’ house
columbusqueen
@Biff Longbotham: One of my favorite cookbooks that I used to teach myself to cook. Everyone loves the food I make from it, especially the gazpacho & Shepard’s style lamb chops.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: There were so many appalling things about it, including the attitude that women shouldn’t put on more than about 15 pounds during pregnancy. I was UNDERWEIGHT at 105 when my pregnancy began and lost 11 pounds before putting on 22 because I was throwing up everything I ate until the 6th month . I’m short and I was skinny, but only gaining a total of 11 pounds through an entire 9 month pregnancy is NOT HEALTHY.
When I went in to deliver, the nurses were concerned because my blood pressure was very high. This same doctor brushed them off, saying I’d had high BP throughout the entire pregnancy. This was the first I’d heard of it. I was pretty damned angry.
When we had Middle Child it was 8 years later and putting on 35 to 40 pounds was no big deal. I only had a few days of morning sickness before I figured out that what worked for me was wearing clothing that was loose. The pregnancy was perfect, no high BP, labor only lasted 4 hours and I didn’t realize it was labor for the first 90 minutes. Thought I was coming down with a stomach bug.
That doctor was good, but the one who delivered my third kid was a walk-on because he was on duty and in charge in Delivery and my regular OBGYN tried to argue that I was not 4 weeks overdue; I could understand them one at a time, but when they were arguing their accents were so different from each other I couldn’t follow the discussion. Regular doc was Korean, delivery doc was Chinese and he was great, and he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen, and I’ve seen a number of very handsome men up close. In the 4 hours he worked with me I developed a little crush on him. Oh my! The crush had worn off by the time I brought the baby back for a visit.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Granny with her suitcase on wheels! ❤️
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: Sounds really stressful. Just when you need someone you can trust… yikes.
All’s well that ends well?
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: Yes. All three kids were just fine.